


Love and Wisdom

by fengirl88



Series: Sleeping Beauty [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Inspired by Music, Operas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 22:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88/pseuds/fengirl88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a long time since Ella last saw <i>The Magic Flute</i>, but she's seeing things in it she can't remember seeing before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love and Wisdom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalypso](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalypso/gifts).



> This fic follows on from [A Strange Adventure](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1062335), in which Maurice and Lestrade see Anthea and Ella at the opera. A different viewpoint on that outing appears in marysutherland's fic [Batgirls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1088602).
> 
> My thanks to Kalypso for beta wisdom and excellent suggestions; this fic is for her.

The Queen of the Night launches into her famous aria about revenge. Der Hölle Rache: it's the thing everyone knows from _The Magic Flute_ , Ella thinks, even if they don't know where it's from. Big show-off coloratura number. She remembers stumbling across an outrageously camp recording of it a few years ago, sung by a Ukrainian counter-tenor complete with a disco backing. There'd been quite a few comments on the website where it appeared, not all of them friendly...

Anthea and Ella are sitting in the upper circle rather than the stalls tonight, since they're paying for the tickets themselves. The view's not as good, of course, but there's less risk of running into Detective Inspector Lestrade out with his boyfriend again. Ella’s not sure why that encounter annoyed Anthea as much as it did; Lestrade’s not likely to pass on gossip about Mycroft’s minions to Sherlock at a crime scene, and even if he did, it’s hardly earth-shattering news that Anthea and her girlfriend like going to the opera. Two encounters in one week would be pushing it, though, and Lestrade’s boyfriend definitely looked the sort who'd always go for the front stalls or maybe a box. Next time Anthea's boss passes on his unwanted freebies, Ella hopes it'll be for something less overblown than ENO's _Die Fledermaus_. 

Anthea's never seen _The Magic Flute_ before, which is why they're here. It wouldn't be Ella's first choice, even though she generally likes Mozart opera: she knows this one's supposed to be about wisdom and transcendence, but that message comes wrapped up in an unlovely combination of racism, misogyny and Masonic ritual. At least the rapist Monostatos isn't a black man in this version. One of the reviews said that they've tried to tone down the misogyny as well, though she doesn't know the piece well enough to recognize where the cuts come. 

The production's full of things that might seem like gimmicks, but which actually work: actors with folded sheets of paper fluttering around Papageno the bird-catcher, screen projections of books coming to life, a Foley artist doing sound effects in a booth at the side of the stage, and his opposite number periodically writing or drawing on a chalkboard. Like a lot of modern opera productions, this one's a bit of an obstacle course: there's a raised platform that keeps tilting and swaying beneath the singers, though nobody's fallen off or sprained anything so far. But there's more to this production than the deliberate quirkiness, Ella thinks.

She's used to hearing the Queen of the Night's aria without focusing on the words; now, for the first time, she finds herself thinking about how it feels to be on the receiving end of it. Watching Pamina, barefoot and in a white dress like a nightie, crawling backwards on her hands and knees as her mother sings at her, Ella's reminded of more than one of her own clients. She doesn't know where this director did his emotional learning, but he's got the toxicity of family relationships right there: a grown woman with all her courage and wisdom, reduced to the helplessness of infancy and cowering beneath her mother's spectacular display of rage. In Act One, the Queen of the Night had a walking-stick; now she's in a wheelchair, which presumably is some sort of symbol for her declining powers. But the power she still has is the power of all mothers: _Do this, or you're no longer my daughter_. The threat of unbelonging, maternal rejection as annihilation. 

Pamina’s still reeling from her mother’s attack when she gets rejected all over again by the man who’s supposed to be her future husband, Tamino, but who won’t even speak to her. He’s been sworn to silence as part of his ordeal, but that’s not much good to her since she doesn’t know about it. No wonder the poor woman’s contemplating suicide until the three boys – three Ancients, in this production – intervene to save her.

They’re the ones who save Papageno from killing himself, too, in his despair of ever finding a mate. This Papageno’s not going to get an unexpected proposal from a female audience member, unlike the handsome young baritone who sang Papageno in the last ENO _Magic Flute_. Tonight’s bird-catcher is middle-aged and scruffy, a lonely, vulnerable man who scribbles “#desperate” on the background artist’s chalkboard.

How odd, Ella thinks: the opera sets Papageno up as the comic sidekick to Tamino, but actually he’s much closer to Pamina, each of them on a quest for love which pushes them to the brink of despair and self-destruction.

It's been a long time since Ella last saw _The Magic Flute_ , but she's seeing things in it she can't remember seeing before. Even the Act One duet between Pamina and Papageno about the sacred mystery of marriage, which is enough to put any self-respecting feminist's back up, lesbian or not, didn't irk her in the way she'd expected. Maybe the translator's put a different spin on it, but what she saw and heard this time was a song about love, sung by two characters who are not lovers and never will be: two friends supporting each other in search of their heart’s desire.

The echo of that Act One duet is still in her head as she and Anthea put on their coats and go out into the cold starry November night, that acknowledgement of the power of love and the yearning for it:

 _We long for the day that love arrives,  
Love is the power that rules our lives_.

She'd never have expected love to arrive in her life the way it did, via a kidnapping and a strange man issuing threats in a warehouse, but it doesn't matter. What matters, she thinks, looking at Anthea's eyes still shining with delight at the end of her first _Magic Flute_ , is to recognize love when it appears, to catch the joy as it flies.

**Author's Note:**

> More on Simon McBurney's production of _The Magic Flute_ for ENO [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1ZZMXVs7as) and [here](http://www.opera-britannia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1043:the-magic-flute-english-national-opera-7th-november-2013-&catid=8:opera-reviews&Itemid=16). The Papageno proposal incident from the previous ENO _Magic Flute_ production is recounted [here](http://jessicamusic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/strewth-papageno-gets-proposal.html).
> 
> The warehouse incident appears in [Sleeping Beauty](http://archiveofourown.org/works/207796), in which Anthea and Ella first get together; their relationship is continued in [Among The Guests](http://archiveofourown.org/works/527358) and [Forbidden Fruit](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1022478).


End file.
